Painting the landscape, for me, is a process of translation. I am always captivated by the light falling over a scene. Striving to be like a good listener in an important conversation I pause and take it in. Usually I take some photos, sometimes I make a sketch. Then I allow some time for the images and ideas to percolate, digest and filter through my own emotional landscape. In the studio I use professional quality oil paints and canvas to produce original oil paintings, often using many layers, to create a piece that has depth and life. My goal is create a piece of art that will stir a sense of peaceful tranquility in the viewer. There is usually a distinct mood–hopeful, somber, mystical or lonely, that wants to be lived in.

Any number of experiences, impressions and even remembered shapes from my past are part of processing my perceptions. I notice that certain themes recur again and again in my work. That must be a part of myself that resonates with the world. I am led by the road that promises something around the bend or over the next rise. The interplay between land and sky at the horizon line and water and sky in reflections captivates me. The infusion of light into the receding hills stops me in my tracks, as do the last rays of light falling across the treetops and hills. I am intrigued and touched by the paths trodden by man and animal, each of us on our own unique but so often shared journey.

The something that is shared and common and underlying so much of our experience shows up in the way my paintings tend to express an idealized viewpoint or archetype rather than the nitty gritty realism that is just as present. It is the incredible beauty of this earth that I am called to express rather than its destruction; the righteousness of the family farm rather than the details of it’s working or peril of its existence. For me a lone tree can often be a symbol of singular strength, fortitude and perseverance.The best possible outcome of the sometimes long and solitary effort put into the process of a painting is when someone else recognizes or is touched by that mood, that ideal or that fleeting instant of something beyond.